Chapter 25 #3
‘Well.’ A sip. I can hear the mug on the counter. The clink, the Eileen fidget. ‘Is it good? The writing?’
‘It’s the best thing I’ve ever read.’
I didn’t rehearse that. My voice shifts on ‘best.’ Gets quieter. Gets real.
Mum hears it, the mug stops moving.
‘Bring them to dinner,’ Mum says.
‘Them’. She gets it right. Like she does everything right. With Laurence, with me, precise.
‘Mum.’
‘Your dad’ll need.’ She stops. Resets. ‘I’ll talk to your dad. You bring them to dinner. A Sunday. When it’s right. There’s no rush.’ A pause. ‘Are they vegetarian? Because I’ll need to know for the roast.’
I almost laugh, almost, that’s how Eileen loves.
‘No, Mum. They eat everything.’
‘Good. I’ll do the lamb then. The one with the rosemary. You like that one.’
She’s already planning, the table, the plates. Where to put the extra chair.
‘Okay,’ I say. My voice cracks. Mum’s listening.
‘You happy, love?’
I look at the flat. My flat. The holdall under the bed. The thermos on the shelf. The glow-in-the-dark stars in the packet on the windowsill.
‘Yeah, Mum. I’m happy.’
‘Good. That’s all I need. You and Ewan happy. The rest is, the rest is details.’
Rest is details, sellotape, Sunday roasts, details.
‘Love you, Mum.’
‘Love you. Eat something. You sound thin.’
The line goes, the beeps. The phone screen. Call ended. Six minutes and forty-nine seconds.
The walls are still here. The bed, the ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars in the packet.
The phone goes dark. I put it on the bed.
My breath does the thing. The thing it did when Celyn was inside me and the full feeling had nowhere else to go.
Two, three. It comes back on its own.
The breath stopping doesn’t feel like panic. Panic is faster. This is just, the body saying something the mouth can’t. The body’s response to a sentence going out into the world and landing safe. Landing right. She said them. No pause. No repetition.
I sit on the bed with the phone on the duvet and the breath coming back slow and the thing in the chest that’s not panic, not fear.
Relief. The concrete relief. The thing that happens when the formwork comes off and the pour set clean and the edges are right.
The structure holds. The weight’s on something solid.
Mum’s already planning the meal. I know this because I know my mother.
She’s hung up the phone and she’s done the maths.
The lamb with the rosemary. The potatoes, she’ll do them with goose fat because everything’s better with goose fat, that’s what she says.
She’ll ring Ewan. She’ll tell him without telling him, I’m having Ron and this Celyn round for.
Mum doesn’t do the performance. She just adjusts. Same as when she’s short an ingredient, works around it, makes the thing work different.
And I told her, on a Thursday, in my flat with the ceiling stain and the stars still in the packet.
I didn’t hide it. Didn’t wait for Christmas or a formal dinner or the right moment because there’s no right moment for something this big.
The right moment is when you can’t not say it anymore.
When holding it costs more than speaking it.
She didn’t have the word ready. She had Ewan’s word, the gay son, the partner. But the second I gave her mine, she took it and didn’t drop it.
The wet goes, the chest settles.
I pick the phone up. Open the text. Type: told mum
Three dots, ten seconds.
and?
she said bring them to dinner
them?
them
The dots again. Longer this time. Twenty seconds, thirty.
she asked what you do. I said horror. she said like my films
did she sound horrified
she sounded like she was already planning to fatten you up
I love her already
Like my films. She’s anchoring it, making it ordinary. My mum, who sits with cups of tea and counts the stairs and worries about me eating enough, already building the frame where Celyn fits. Already has the space ready.
Then, after a pause:
Ron
yeah
you did it on a Thursday
yeah
not a Sunday
no
because Sundays are too easy to hide in
I stare at the screen. Celyn knows. Knows because I told them once, half-asleep, face in the pillow. Said: I can’t do it on a Sunday. Sundays are too easy. And Celyn kept it.
you remembered that
I remember everything you tell me at 2 a.m. It’s when you say the real things.
Then, after a pause, a heart emoji.
One heart. Red. From someone who writes for a living and chose one red heart.
And the thing that catches in my ribs is home. The door’s open, the kitchen’s warm. There’s a place at the table being set right now, in my head, in my mother’s head, the place where Celyn belongs.
I hold the phone for a moment. Then the bed, the ceiling. The stain from the leak the landlord hasn’t fixed. The stars in the packet on the windowsill. Sealed, waiting.
Tomorrow. I’ll put them up tomorrow. Celyn’s going to say they’re in the wrong place and I’m going to say I don’t know where Orion goes and Celyn’s going to do the face.
Thursday night, not Sunday.
The world’s still here, just changed shape.
And I’m still here, inside it, because I told it where I stood.